To take that course by your consent and voice,
Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam.
Cas. O Priam, yield not to him.
And.
Do not, dear father.
Hect. Andromache, I am offended with you;
Upon the love you bear me, get you in.

[Exit ANDROMACHE. Tro. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl

Makes all these bodements.

Cas.
O farewell, dear Hector.
Look, how thou diest! look, how thy eye turns pale!
Look, how thy wounds do bleed at many vents!
Hark, how Troy roars! how Hecuba cries out!
How poor Andromache shrills her dolors forth!
Behold! destruction, frenzy, and amazement,
Like witless antics, one another meet,

And all cry-Hector! Hector's dead! O Hector!
Tro. Away!-Away!

Cas. Farewell.-Yet, soft.-Hector, I take my leave; Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive.

[Exit.

Hect. You are amazed, my liege, at her exclaim. Go in, and cheer the town: we'll forth, and fight; Do deeds worth praise, and tell you them at night. Pri. Farewell; the gods with safety stand about thee!

[Exeunt severally PRIAM and HEctor. Alarums.

Tro. They are at it; hark! Proud Diomed, believe, I come to lose my arm, or win my sleeve.

AS TROILUS is going out, enter, from the other side, PANDARUS.

Pan. Do you hear, my lord? do you hear?

Tro. What now?

Pan. Here's a letter from yon' poor girl.

Tro. Let me read.

1 The same verb is used by Spenser.

2 The folio reads distraction.

Pan. A whoreson phthisic, a whoreson, rascally phthisic so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl; and what one thing, what another, that I shall leave you one o' these days. And I have a rheum in mine eyes too; and such an ache in my bones, that, unless a man were cursed,' I cannot tell what to think on't. What says she there?

Tro. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; [Tearing the letter. The effect doth operate another way.

Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. My love with words and errors still she feeds;

But edifies another with her deeds. [Exeunt severally.

SCENE. IV. Between Troy and the Grecian Camp.

I'll

Alarums: Excursions. Enter THERSITES.

Ther. Now they are clapper-clawing one another; go look on. That dissembling, abominable varlet, Diomed, has got that same scurvy, doting, foolish young knave's sleeve of Troy there, in his helm. I would fain see them meet; that that same young Trojan ass, that loves the whore there, might send that Greekish, whoremasterly villain, with the sleeve, back to the dissembling, luxurious drab, on a sleeveless errand. O'the other side, the policy of those crafty, swearing rascals,—that stale, old, mouse-eaten, dry cheese, Nestor; and that same dog-fox, Ulysses,-is not proved worth a blackberry.-They set me up, in policy, that mongrel cur, Ajax, against that dog of as bad a kind, Achilles; and now is the cur Ajax prouder than the cur Achilles, and will not arm to-day; whereupon the Grecians begin to proclaim barbarism,3 and policy grows into an ill opinion. Soft! here comes sleeve, and t'other.

1 That is, under the influence of a malediction.

2 Theobald proposes to read "sneering rascals."

3 To set up the authority of ignorance, and to declare that they will be governed by policy no longer.

Enter DIOMEDES, TROILUS following.

Tro. Fly not; for, shouldst thou take the river Styx,

I would swim after.

Dio.

Thou dost miscall retire.

I do not fly; but advantageous care
Withdrew me from the odds of multitude.

Have at thee!

Ther. Hold thy whore, Grecian!-now for thy whore, Trojan!-now the sleeve, now the sleeve! [Exeunt TROILUS and DIOMEDES, fighting.

Enter HECTOR.

Hect. What art thou, Greek? art thou for Hector's match?

Art thou of blood, and honor ?1

Ther. No, no.-I am a rascal; a scurvy, railing knave; a very filthy rogue.

Hect. I do believe thee;-live. [Exit. Ther. God-a-mercy, that thou wilt believe me; but a plague break thy neck, for frighting me! What's become of the wenching rogues? I think they have swallowed one another; I would laugh at that miracle. Yet, in a sort, lechery eats itself. I'll seek them.

SCENE V. The same.

Enter DIOMEDES and a Servant.

[Exit.

Dio. Go, go, my servant, take thou Troilus' horse; Present the fair steed to my lady Cressid:

Fellow, commend my service to her beauty
Tell her, I have chastised the amorous Trojan,
And am her knight by proof.

1 This, like several others in this play, is an idea taken from the ancient books of romantic chivalry, and even from the usage of the Poet's age. It appears from Segar's Honour, Military and Civil, folio, 1602, that a person of superior birth might not be challenged by an inferior, or if challenged might refuse combat.

Serv.

I go, my lord.
[Exit Servant.

Enter AGAMEMNON.

Agam. Renew, renew! The fierce Polydamas
Hath beat down Menon; bastard Margarelon
Hath Doreus prisoner;

And stands colossus-wise, waving his beam,1
Upon the pashed corses of the kings
Epistrophus and Cedius. Polixenes is slain;
Amphimachus, and Thoas, deadly hurt;
Patroclus ta'en, or slain; and Palamedes
Sore hurt and bruised; the dreadful Sagittary 3
Appals our numbers; haste we, Diomed,
To reinforcement, or we perish all.

Enter NESTOR.

4

Nest. Go, bear Patroclus' body to Achilles;
And bid the snail-paced Ajax arm for shame.-
There is a thousand Hectors in the field;
Now here he fights on Galathe his horse,
And there lacks work; anon, he's there afoot,
And there they fly, or die, like scaled sculls *
Before the belching whale; then is he yonder,
And there the strawy Greeks, ripe for his edge,
Fall down before him, like the mower's swath.
Here, there, and every where, he leaves and takes;
Dexterity so obeying appetite,

That what he will, he does; and does so much,
That proof is called impossibility.

1 i. e. his lance, like a weaver's beam.

2 Bruised, crushed.

3 "A mervayllous beaste that was called Sagittayre, that behynde the myddes was an horse, and to fore, a man: this beste was heery like an horse, and shotte well with a bowe: this beste made the Greekes sore aferde, and slewe many of them with his bowe."-Destruction of Troy, by Carton.

4 i. e. dispersed shoals. "A scull of fishes-examen vel agmen piscium" (Baret)-was also, in more ancient times, written "a scoole."

Enter ULYSSES.

Ulyss. O, courage, courage, princes! great Achilles Is arming, weeping, cursing, vowing vengeance. Patroclus' wounds have roused his drowsy blood, Together with his mangled myrmidons,

That noseless, handless, hacked and chipped, come to him,

Crying on Hector. Ajax hath lost a friend,

And foams at mouth, and he is armed, and at it,
Roaring for Troilus; who hath done to-day
Mad and fantastic execution;

Engaging and redeeming of himself,

With such a careless force, and forceless care,
As if that luck, in very spite of cunning,
Bade him win all.

Enter AJAX.

Ajax. Troilus! thou coward Troilus!
Dio.

Nest. So, so, we draw together.1

[Exit.

Ay, there, there.

Achil.

Enter ACHIlles.

Where is this Hector?

Come, come, thou boy-queller, show thy face;
Know what it is to meet Achilles angry.

Hector! where's Hector? I will none but Hector.

[Exeunt.

SCENE VI. Another Part of the Field.

Enter AJAX.

Ajax. Troilus, thou coward Troilus, show thy head!

1 This remark seems to be made in consequence of the return of Ajax to the field, he having lately refused to coöperate or draw together with the Greeks.

2 i. e. murderer of boys.